Creating attribute sets in Magento

When you want to add new products to your Magento store, the first step is to make sure Magento is prepared for entering your product data, which will be fed into various attributes. These attributes won’t apply to every product and will likely need to be separated into attribute sets. This blog post provides a useful guide for creating these sets!

Creating New Attributes

To find where Magento attributes are stored, go to the “Stores” section. Under “Attributes”, click “Product”. This will take you to the product attribute screen which shows all created attributes as well as gives options to create your own custom attributes.

To add a new attribute, click on “Add New attribute” and fill in the following fields:

Label: Name the attribute in this field. This should have some relevance to an attribute your product/s has.

Catalog Input Type for Store Owner: ****Attributes in Magento have several input types to choose from, affecting what data can be input. The types are under the “Catalog Input Type for Store Owner” field. The following input types are available:

• Text Field: Used for single lines of text, e.g. SKU
• Text Area: Allows multiple lines of text to make a paragraph e.g. a longer product description
• Text Editor: Like Text Area with having multiple lines of text but has advanced options built in for editing text in this attribute. Some features include text styling and inserting media/links.
• Date/Date & Time: These attribute types would store a date and/or time. Can be used for time-specific data, e.g. product release date.
• Yes/No: A Boolean attribute type. Can be used for attributes using Boolean values such as True/False.
• Multiple Select: For attributes where multiple values could be applied for a field. E.g. a phone case may be able to fit several different mobile devices, so this attribute can be used to list all compatible devices.
• Dropdown: Similar to the multi-select, except that you are only able to select a single option from the list. This is useful for storing a list of brands for a product and quickly entering the correct brand.

Manage Options: This field is used for entering the options for the Dropdown and Multi-Select attribute types.

Price: This field is used for creating attributes such as cost, sale price, and price.

Media Image: Useful for when adding additional images for purposes such as logos, instructions, and guidelines.

Visual Swatch: This is the colour/pattern/image used on a configurable product. This swatch can be populated with an image or hex-value on the front end to make it easier for customers to select a relevant product.

Text Swatch: Another type used for configurable products. Use this like the Dropdown type on the front end to select different values for a configurable product, e.g. shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL)

Fixed Product Tax: Used for setting FPT rates based on selling location.

You can now see if this attribute requires a value. You can also make it an essential attribute to populate when creating certain products.

Once you have created your attributes, the table should have the created attributes as below:

Now we just need to organise these attributes into meaningful groups so that we can use them more easily!

Sorting attributes into sets

Now that you have created your attributes, you need to sort them into sets for specific products/types of products. This is because items need different attributes, e.g. a shirt requires different attributes than a laptop. Furthermore, if any of those attributes have been set as required for product completion then it may be impossible to create a product without separating the attributes accordingly.

To create an attribute set, navigate to the settings through the “Stores” page, then select “Attribute Sets”, under “Attributes”.

This page will show all existing sets that you can edit as needed. In most cases, you will start with the “Default” set. We recommend that you edit this set to include all attributes you know will be used across every product.

Here is an example of how to structure your default attribute set. Feel free to take this structure and adapt it to your own product needs.

To create a new set, select “Add Attribute Set”, and give the set a name. This example is called ‘TShirts’, as the set will contain TShirt products. It will be based on the default attribute set so that it has all the regular attributes needed as a base. Then we can add the other relevant sections as needed.

Next, drag over the related attributes you want in the set. In this example, we want attributes related to T-Shirts and clothing.

Now that this set has been created and saved, we can use it when adding TShirt products to Magento. We will have the required attributes for this product ready to be filled without having to wade through irrelevant fields and attributes.